Category: Photo inspiration

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Tattoo stories: Cicely

At Things&Ink we’re a curious bunch – we want to know about your tattoos. Why did you get that design? Why that artist? Tell us EVERYTHING! So we’re introducing our tattoo stories series, as a way to get to know you all better (and be nosy). Here’s Cicely Rae Jackson (she/her) sharing her tattoo story…

Hello! My name is Cicely and I live in Holmfirth with my husband Josh and our two kids Lilith and Abel. I create content for a living and spend the rest of my time hunting for treasures in our local charity shops!

How old were you when you got your first tattoo, what was it and do you still like it? I was 17 or 18 when I got my first tattoo. It was a pretty dodgy studio and there were a lot of red flags that would stop me going ahead with the tattoo now, but I was young and inexperienced! 

I asked for a bow on the back of my ankle (they were super trendy back then ). I was never shown a design and the guy tattooed directly on to my leg without a stencil or freehand drawing, but I was happy enough with it for a couple of months. I then went to another studio and had it coloured in to try improve it, but it still wasn’t amazing. I later had it covered up with a bigger lilac bow, but you could still clearly see the original bow underneath.

So I eventually went to a great artist who worked it into another tattoo and covered up it up with a navy bow. 

What made you want to get tattooed? I’ve always loved the look of tattoos and grew up with a mum who really supported us in expressing ourselves and I just knew I wanted to be covered in tattoos at some point in my life.

Can you tell us about your tattoo collection, any favourite pieces, artists or experiences? The majority of my tattoos are traditional designs or done in a traditional style. I love how bold they look and how they sit together.

One of my favourite memories of getting tattooed was when my sister and I took a trip down the country to Hastings to get tattooed by Cassandra Francis. We got a hotel room and stayed for the weekend, it was such a great adventure.

When I chose my wedding dress I knew I needed my shoulders tattooed. That was such exciting wedding prep going to shedwolf in our local town to get them done in the lead up to the wedding.

Cicely on her wedding day

Jemma Jones has done kewpie baby tattoos of both our children, on both me and my husband. They are the same but different and I love how they represent the kids’ names.

One of my pride and joy tattoos is a crying lady head by Danielle Rose. She did a guest spot in Manchester on my birthday and it was meant to be. I had had a big year of crying, including a break up and getting this tattoo was a lovely end to that!

Do tattoos have to have a meaning? Not at all! Personally I consider my tattoos a collection of art from talented artists, I have a couple that mean a lot to me but I’d say 85% have no meaning!

What sorts of reactions do your tattoos get? I’m always happy to discuss my tattoos with people that have a genuine interest in them, the style or specific artists etc. I’d much rather people talk to me about them than just stare. 

The negative reactions to my tattoos have predominantly been from family members or people of the older generation. A manager, at one of the jobs I had as a teen, was really against my tattoos being on show as I worked on the women’s wear floor of a department store. The same rules didn’t apply to the staff on the men’s wear floor and we had a lot of disagreements about this!

Can you tell us about your experience as a tattooed mum? My experience as a tattooed mum has been on the whole, a positive one. When my daughter was younger and we would go to different baby groups, I would always be conscious that other mums would judge me but I think a lot of that was in my head.

I’ve also found tattoos to be a really lovely talking point with like-minded mums at these kind of baby groups or in the playground! If my tattoos put people off wanting to approach me as a mum friend then more than likely we wouldn’t get on anyway! 

What do your children think of your tattoos? They don’t really seem to notice them, I guess as they have been part of me for their whole lives. Sometimes my daughter will try to look for matching items that me and my husband have, like snakes or babies. My daughter’s friend refers to my tattoos as my patterns and she always wants to feel them.

Do your tattoos help you to view your body differently? I absolutely adore my body and I think my tattoos have played a big part in that. Sometimes when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror or see a photo that includes a lot of my tattoos, I feel so happy as this is exactly how I’ve always wanted to look.

Do you have any future tattoo plans? I would be completely covered if I had the money and the time! The next one I have booked in is my fingers and I would love to start on my chest this year.

Be sure to follow Cicely for charity shop treasure hunts, adorable kids and craft inspiration.

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Interview with YouTuber Lauren Petrie

30-year-old Lauren Petrie (also known as ‘Treacle Tatts’) is a popular YouTuber and social media personality who started her YouTube career in 2014 and has since amassed an 100k following. Her videos almost completely revolve around tattoos and she frequently addresses injustice in the tattoo community to raise awareness and help educate her viewers. I had a chance to speak with Lauren recently about her YouTube career, her tattoo collection and how she has been handling the covid-19 lockdown…

Tell us a bit about why you started your YouTube channel. There’s a few reasons why I started my channel! One is I studied media in college, and I loved video editing and I wanted to get back into video editing again. I thought making Youtube videos would be a great way to do that but had no idea what kind of videos to make. I definitely don’t have the best makeup, gaming or cooking skills so all of those were out of the question when it came to making content so I thought I’d make videos on tattoos.

To start off with it was more so to see if people related to stuff I had gone through as a tattooed person as at the time there was no tattooed people in my life. I then thought “hey use your experiences to help people when it comes to tattoos” as I didn’t start off getting the best tattoos and slowly learned how amazing and artistic tattoos could be! I then continued making videos on my experiences and giving advice on how to get good tattoos!

How has YouTube affected your life? It’s given me the freedom to be my own boss and work when I want and talk about stuff, I’m super passionate about! I managed to turn my hobby into my job and I got to quit my retail job to do it full time! It’s an absolute pleasure to do and will be forever thankful that I get to do it!

What do you enjoy the most about being a YouTuber? Being able to connect with people who have the same interests as me! Talking to fellow people who get super excited about an upcoming tattoo appointment and the such! Its also learning about other people’s experiences when it comes to getting tattooed and who they are as people! I just find other tattooed people fascinating! I make some videos that involve my subscribers and they are from all walks of life from lawyers, to grandparents, to chefs, to students, retail workers I mean the list can go on!

I love to share people’s backgrounds to prove that tattoos aren’t just for celebrities or criminals like some people like to think!

What first attracted you to the world of tattoos? I can’t pinpoint an exact moment because even as a child I loved them! I’d always cover myself in temporary tattoos! I’d be that weird kid that stared at tattooed people in a store and not because I thought they were weird but because I thought they were the coolest person on the planet! None of my family have tattoos so I never grew up around them so maybe that peaked my interest even more! 

Can you tell us about your tattoo collection? Do you have a favourite tattoo? My tattoo collection is a huge mish mash of styles and colours. Some are personal or custom drawn and some are just flash drawn pieces from some of my favourite artists! I like symmetry and organising by colour. So my left arm is colour traditional and then my right arm is a black work blast over (still in progress) then my left leg is black work and my right leg is colour. I just thought it would be a fun way to style my tattoos. 

It’s so hard to pick a favourite tattoo but at the moment I’d have to say it’s my black work peony neck tattoo by Heidi Furey! I spent a couple of years really deciding if I wanted to be very visibly tattooed and I finally went for it and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made! 

We love your outfit posts on Instagram! How would you describe your style? Ow thank you!! My fashion is all over the place to be honest one day I’ll be wearing loud plaid trousers and the next I’ll be wearing all black and studded stuff but one thing I continuously wear I guess is oversized printed tees! I can’t get enough of them! Most of them are tattoo art inspired because why stop at getting just tattoos when you can have the art style on a t-shirt!

How have you been coping with the covid-19 lockdown? I’m very much an introvert so staying in didn’t really affect me much at first. I did start to get restless here and there as time went on! I really missed my best friend Yasmin and our little restaurant and cinema dates! Before lockdown we would go to the cinema and out to eat at least once a week! 

Do you have any future tattoo plans now that a lot of tattoo shops have reopened? Yes! I have an appointment to do more work on my black work blast over arm! I also want to finally get my knees tattooed! I’ve been putting them off for years as the thought of getting major bony areas tattooed grosses me out – I hate the feeling!

Do you have any upcoming projects or plans for your channel or new merchandise you would like to tell us about? I don’t have anything major in the works at the moment I kind of just make content when I come up with the ideas or if something major happens with in the tattoo world like the recent sexual assault allegations I like to make content on that so more awareness is made!

At the moment I’m trying to create more awareness for black and POC in the tattoo industry! There’s a lack of representation so I want to use my platform to celebrate POC tattoo artists and those that tattoo on darker skin tones! As for merch, I think I want to start getting my artistic subscribers involved and commission some fab art from them to use on merch! 

Words: Lucy Edwards, a 20-year-old tattooed university student, cat mum and trying-new-things enthusiast. You’ll most likely find Lucy posting about mental health awareness and self-acceptance on her Instagram.

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Tattoo Street Style by Alice Snape

Our editor Alice Snape’s Tattoo Street Style book came out last year. It features more than 400 original portraits in cities from London and Brighton to LA and NYC, and a directory of studios in each city, a guide to tattoo styles and a personal foreword from tattoo artist Cally-Jo. Here’s a peek inside, and the reasons why Alice wrote the book.

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Derryth Ridge, spotted in Brighton. Photo by Heather Shuker

I’ve always been fascinated by people and enjoyed glimpsing them from afar, and spying what they’re up to. When I travel to a new city, my favourite thing to do is find a little café and sit sipping a cup of coffee, watching the world go by. I love looking what someone has chosen to wear or their hair colour, wondering why I might be drawn to that person’s particular style, the way they walk or hold themselves. I make up little stories about them in my mind – perhaps they are on their way to a meeting, to call on a friend, to hang out at the park or to go to work? This fascination is why I fell in love with street style photography. I love that it captures a moment, a city, a person at that exact point in time. Street-style photos tell a story – tiny but complete – of a place and the people in it.

Manni Kalsi, spotted in London. Photo by Heather Shuker
Manni Kalsi, spotted in London.
Photo by Heather Shuker

What I have loved about writing this book is not only capturing a sense of each city, but working with different photographers in each location, whom we briefed to capture their city through their own lens. The result doesn’t just provide a snapshot, it communicates a particular vision, with each photographer contributing his or her own unique style and interpretation of what ‘street style’ looks like.

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Simone Thompson, spotted in New York. Photo by Elena Mudd

Alongside the imagery, I have loved delving further into what motivates each of those people and gathering snippets of their life stories. This volume of Tattoo Street Style allows me to introduce you to some prominent figures in the tattoo world, such as Wendy Pham in Berlin and Angelique Houtkamp in Amsterdam. But we’ve also spoken with random inhabitants of the eight cities we have featured – people I never would have discovered if I hadn’t written this book. In my everyday life, I often wish I could stop someone in the street and find out more about them – this book has given me the chance to do just that. In London, businesswoman Sian Rusu shared that her tattoos make her feel “different – and difference is what makes us unique”. In contrast, Berlin’s stylist Flora Amelie talks honestly about sometimes questioning her decision to become heavily tattooed, a revelation you wouldn’t expect from someone who portrays such confidence.

Flora Amalie Pedersen spotted in Berlin. Photo by Lisa Jane
Flora Amalie Pedersen spotted in Berlin.
Photo by Lisa Jane

It has been a joy to curate this compendium of tattoos and fashion in eight of my favourite places around the world, cities I have lived in, loved spending time in and dream of returning to. I love that it will immortalise this period in time. I love that one day, someone will look at it as a historical document, in the way that I have looked at old photos of tattooed women from the 1940s. What feels so thoughtfully current now as you flick through the pages will one day be but a memory of our own moment in time.

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Cally-Jo, spotted in Brighton. Photo by Heather Shuker

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In all good bookshops and available to order online here

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For Identity // Against Stereotypes

A couple of months ago, lingerie brand The Underargument asked our editor Alice to model for their new campaign: For Identity // Against Stereotypes. This inspiring lingerie brand is a wearable reminder to embrace individuality and argue against the norm.

The For Identity // Against Stereotypes collection illustrates that we are more than the boxes that we are sometimes put in. Your identity does not start or stop with your gender, your religion, your abilities, your cultural, occupational or social background. This underargument will remind you that you don’t have to be the product of your environment and predispositions or let stereotypes define you.

Here is Alice’s story for the collection. 

 

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“One of my favourite things about my tattoos is that they challenge traditional stereotypes of beauty, that a woman’s skin should be pure or unmarked. It still shocks me that, in 2019, some magazines and mainstream media push the idea that we should look a certain way, by losing weight or using make-up to conceal our so called imperfections. It is so damaging.”

“Perceptions of tattooed women have always suggested sexual promiscuity and over-confidence. And I think that society still views female confidence with an irrational disdain. Perhaps that is why tattoos on a woman are so provocative. I don’t often wear shorts in the summer now for fear of #tatcalling. As dependable as clockwork – when you’re a tattooed woman in public, some guy will eventually shout, “I like your tattoos!” My tattoos aren’t an invitation to leer at me. My tattoo on my back is certainly not permission to run your hands down my spine or pull my top down to “get a better look” or ask me “how far does that go down love?”; I am not public property. Tattoos don’t make me “easy”, they are not any reflection of my morals and they don’t mean I am seeking attention.

I bumped into an ex a few years ago who was like “what are you, good girl gone bad? “

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“Whenever I go back to my hometown, it’s a small place in the midlands, people are always shocked that I have tattoos. I bumped into an ex a few years ago who was like “what are you, good girl gone bad? “. My uncle has a few tattoos and even he is surprised that I am the one in the family who is heavily tattooed. Women with tattoos are never portrayed as the “girl next door”, they are never the nerdy girl, they are the bad girl, and they are sexualised. Women with tattoos have been painted that way for years. The Tattooed Lady in the circus, for example, was literally a freak, a strange creature to be objectified.

“Tattoos have always been for “tough guys”, and men with tattoos aren’t sexualised in the same way that women are. I was a studious girl at school, quiet, shy, forever with my head in a book. The fact that I have ink on my skin apparently doesn’t fit into mould. But I am still that person. In fact, tattoos have given me confidence. I used to hate the way I looked and adorning my body with beautiful artwork has been empowering – and I can’t wait to see how my collection grows. I would love to fill all the gaps. It will be my life’s work. It is funny. People often ask if I worry about what I will look like when I am older, but, really, why would I? I don’t plan on fitting into another stereotype about what I should or shouldn’t look like in my seventies, eighties, nineties…”

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View more at theunderargument.com